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Bitwarden CLI distributed through NPM has been compromised. Bitwarden Statement on Checkmarx Supply Chain Incident.
(community.bitwarden.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
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Don't. Use. Npm.
That applies to pip and crate and all the other shitty lang package managers that totally fail at security
What about using pip just to download basic common libraries for offline use?
What should be used instead?
A package manager that uses cryptographic signatures. Apt had this since 2005 iirc. Use apt.
if the dev(s) gets compromised there's the same issue, except with an extra checkmark on it.
Packages are reviewed by package maintainers.
Humans are required to solve a malicious insider. But most supply chain vulns of these shitty software dependency managers were resolved decades ago by freely available cryptography
Human review really should be what's needed, maybe not even just by the package maintainers.
Easy, just vendor all your dependencies! Can't have a supply chain attack if you are the supply chain.
so many workplaces I have been at used npm.
We just recently switched from npm to pnpm, due to all the supply chain attacks. I did the PR for it, even.
Our release schedule is like a year though so we don't really have to worry much about releasing compromised dependencies. But still, better to be on the safer side.
Yep. And so many workplaces have had security vulnerabilities caused by dumb decisions that could have been easily avoided
what about cargo?
use https://mozilla.github.io/cargo-vet/
Same problem.
Honestly just fine use computers at all, completely eliminate the remote attack vector. And only drink rain water since city water can be compromised.
Or, recognize this is a normal part of using software and have more than 1 thing between you and a breach
The rules of cybersecurity:
Under no circumstances should you own a computer.
If you absolutely must own a computer, under no circumstances should you connect it to the internet.
If you absolutely must connect it to the internet, it’s too late and they already have you
I know this is a joke but im old enough we used to install the os and had it on the network and eventually update it but then it got to the point were like being connected to the internet for like a minute and the machines were compromised. Thats when we got off our duffs and started making custom installs that had updates and configurations and software pre installed before we even connected it to the net.
Dude, rain water is full of pollutants too. 😂
Apt works great
And how would apt help in this particular case? A supply chain attack can happen with any particular package manager. In this case, the compromised package was detected and mitigated within 93 minutes, affecting a total of ~330 users. Which is a lot better than how a lot of distros handled the xz breach last year.
All reasonably secure package managers (and https) operate on a chain of trust. There is little that can be done if that chain of trust is broken.
Based on this the cause was a malicious VSCode extension that stole credentials that were later used to trigger a deployment CI/CD pipeline. If there's anything to learn from this, it's probably to not use VSCode.
With cryptography. X.509 is trash. They should pin the public key.
TLS is fine with certificate pinning m
That still leaves two out of three questions unanswered. Most importantly the last one, which was addressed towards the original complaint.
it's much more convenient when you use something like btrfs-snapshots
Unfortunately I have to use node for home project (Jellyfin tizen)
I was wondering: would it be possible to run node in a sandbox to lower the scope of the attack? (i.e. not compromise my home computer) Or is maybe a full VM a better solution?
Technically you can use node without npm.
Jellyfin is available in apt
I need to build it, jellyfin-tizen is a separate project for Samsung TVs
I think you need to throw out the Samsung TV to be secure
Wouldn't verion pinning solve this problem?
In case of NPM version pinning is a good practice. But also set it to ignore post install scripts. They are a bad practice and only about 2 % of all packages use it so it is unlikely it will bother you. They, the post install scripts, were used in recent supply chain attacks btw (the axios). You can either set it project wide in .npmrc file, add
ignore-scripts=true, that is good for project where multiple people collaborate. And/Or system wide by runningnpm config set ignore-scripts truefor your personal workspace. You can also achieve it by using --ignore-scripts flag during npm install, but that is way too impractical to always think about it. Also I would recommend checking npq, its a wrapper around npm cli that will give you some security summary before installing anything (and it is able to give you warning about post install scripts).Full VM and network isolation. and dont put anything important there (nor a reused password for auth)